How To: Redo Your Dining Room 2 years After You Completely Re-did It...

Step-by-step:

1 - Approximately 1.5 years after completely renovating your dining room and painting it with Martha Stewart's Pumpkin Butter, one hormonal afternoon decide that you hate it. Because it's orange. And orange is limiting when picking out other colors in the house. And it blends in with your floors. And your dog (who also blends in with your floors).

OMG you guys. I legit just realized our living and dining room color scheme was completely based off our dog. Wow. 

You thought I was joking.

anyway...

2 - Over the course of the next 2 months, slowly increase the number of times you criticize the color of your dining room to your husband. Examples may include:
"This room makes me want to eat pumpkin pie."
"Does the dining room look a little poopy in this light?"
"OMG - WHERE IS STELLA?! Oh here she is. She's camouflaged in pumpkin butter."

I couldn't find a actual picture this phenomena - probably because she in blends so well that
I couldn't find her in photos. This is just a gratuitous "isn't my dog adorbz?!" photo.

3 - If your complaining fails to convince your husband to let you start another project, try whining a little.
"But I don't liiiiikkkkkke it."
"Plllllleeeeeeasssssse?"
NOTE: Failing that, just start the project on a Saturday when he's in the lab. So far this method works well for relatively new newlyweds. I'll be sure to report back how this method stands the test of marriage being married to me.

4 - Decide that this project should incorporate the present your dad got you for Christmas - an air compressor. (People who know me and my dad aren't even blinking an eye at this.)
NOTE: Air compressors smoke a lot when you start them for the first time. Something about oil. Always start your new air compressor for the first time outdoors where it can burn off in your kitchen.

5 - Since board and batten requires a lot of nails and patience (one of which you don't have, the other which you can buy) - go with that. Draw a picture to help you figure out how much lumber you need. Make sure that you won't be able to decipher what the hell you were doing when you look at it again 2 months later.

Note me calling our dog walker by the wrong name in the corner. Fail.

6 - Because of a super duper long line at the paint counter at HD and your impressive lack amount of patience, paint the bottom third of your dining room Behr white. Not the fancy white you had picked out - just plain ol' off-the-shelf white.

Oooo look at that nice view of that wood paneling and green laminate. 

7 - While attaching the horizontal boards, if you happen to find yourself with an incredibly curvaceous wall, throw all of your weight into the board to try to get it to bend to the shape of the wall. Heck - hit it with a hammer a few times to see if you can persuade it. When you start to feel the drywall give way, hit it one more time before giving up. Then go back to HD and pick up a fake board made out of PVC that is bendy. Attach it and hope no one notices your outrageously curvy wall.

8 - Place and attach vertical slats. Then stop for a week to annoy your husband pick the perfect paint color.

As with whites, who knew there were so many... gray shades? Notice how I avoided that so smoothly? 

9 - After deliberating for a week over different grays, choose the same gray as you already have in your hallway. Because you're exciting and risky like that. 

10 - (Optional step) Hang up white curtains. Tape a blue paint chip on one because you envision painting stripes on them. Leave it there for 3 months and then start a new project (i.e. a full kitchen remodel).

Just for fun here's a real "before" picture!

Oye.

Feel free to OOO and AHH with me.

Kitchen Renovation, Step #2

Step 2: Begin Demolition

Miss Step 1?

Step-by-step

Note: This step is best done 36 hours after you've returned from vacation via a red-eye flight and are suffering from severe jet lag and lack of sleep.

a) Around 10 am on a holiday, while still wearing your pjs, loudly declare that it's too hot to work outside and that you're too tired to do any "real work" on the kitchen.

b) At 11:30 am ask your husband how destructive you're allowed to be that day. When he replies that he doesn't care "as long as he can start cooking dinner at 5:30 pm" run upstairs and change into your work clothes. Shoes optional.

c) Use a small crowbar, hammer, screwdriver, needle-nose pliers, and basically any other random tools you can find in the basement (remember - you're avoiding going outside) to begin pulling paneling and trim off the walls. Be sure to de-nail the paneling so you don't stab yourself while carrying pieces. When nails and splinters starts to accumulate on the floor, decide that shoes are actually not optional.
NOTE: If you happen to find a large hole with exposed electrical wires poking out of it when you remove the paneling, break off a smaller piece of paneling and nail it back over the hole for your dad to deal with later.
NOTE x2: When you find yourself stuck behind a giant piece of paneling that has sandwiched you between it and the sink, DO NOT ASK FOR HELP. I repeat - DO NOT ASK FOR HELP. Instead, swear, grunt, and shove at it until it moves and consider your teapot, trashcans, and tools that end up on the floor as you scrape the paneling over the countertops collateral damage for your victory.

d) Remove as much paneling as you can reasonably reach without tearing out cabinets. Tear out cabinets if necessary. In order to make sure your husband feels like he's part of the project, ask him nicely to carry discarded cabinets to the curb for you.

e) At 5:25 pm start sweeping up debris and throwing your tools back in the basement.

f) At 5:40 turn the kitchen back over to your husband looking like this:

Please note the smokey outline of what was likely decorative plates near the ceiling. Yummy.

g) Optional step: Fall asleep on the living room floor while your husband makes dinner.

Kitchen Renovation, Step #1

Step 1: Purchase Cabinets

Step-by-step

1a) While touring your favorite used home improvement store with your parents decide that a used set of kitchen cabinets for sale might work in your kitchen and would save you at least $4,000 over new Ikea cabinets.

1b) Take a ton of pictures and measurements of said cabinets to take back and convince your hubby to allow you to spend your tax return on them.

1c) Back at your house, while your parents measure out your kitchen, try to convince your husband to let you go back and buy the cabinets today because your parents and their minivan are leaving in a few hours. NOTE: If your husband makes you promise that the cabinets won't take up the whole garage, smile sweetly and promise that they absolutely will not take up the entire garage.

1d) Return to your favorite used home improvement store to purchase cabinets approximately 25 min before they close and about 3 hours before your parents are scheduled to leave. With the cabinets in the back of the store, this leaves you with enough time to make approximately 2.5 trips to the minivan before the store starts turning off the lights on you. At this point, play up the sympathy vote. If you're lucky, an employee at the store who happens to own a truck may offer to haul the rest of the cabinets home for you for $10. Agree before he can finish offering and then give him $20. NOTE: Try not to cry tears of relief. That will only make things awkward.

1e) Once all of the cabinets are unloaded on your front lawn, carry them back into the garage - filling it entirely. 

1f) Hug parents goodbye, apologize to husband, then quietly do victory dance in your now very-limited garage space.

Gettin' Hitched - Literary Style: DIY Rehearsal Dinner

Warning: Photo Dump. But good photos! Photos from our awesome rehearsal dinner! Since we got married in Michigan, we had a Wisconsin-themed rehearsal dinner in order to incorporate some of J's favorite things - beer, cheese, brats, and beer. Oh - and the Packers, Brewers, and beer.

I should begin with how we started that day though. It was obviously a very stressful day...

Basking in the sun

Project: Hallway Over-Hall, Part 1

This is one of those projects that started because of another project, during which I got distracted and started working on something else - and now this project is finished and the one that I started is still sitting in the garage... sound familiar?

At least both projects are in the hallway. Our weird, little hallway. It's just a really small space in which six different doors/entryways intersect. Clockwise, we have: the entryway from the living room, a closet with a folding door, the door to the guest room, the door to the bathroom, another closet door, and then the door that heads upstairs.  Originally there was actually another door in there too (from when the living room was another bedroom - you can read more about that here), and that may explain why the door that heads upstairs currently swings out into the hallway. And while that may have used to make sense, now it's just an annoying problem.

Gettin' Hitched - Literary Style: DIY Save-the-Dates and Invitations

When the Mr. and I got engaged a few years ago, we weren't really sure where to begin planning. Should we have a big, white wedding or shoot for a destination wedding and get married on a beach somewhere tropical? Hire it out or DIY? How much should we spend? How much can we afford? Should we have a theme? Who should stand up with us? And on and on and on...

Theme-wise, we went round and round a bit, but really only threw around one idea seriously - books. Yep. We're nerds - and we embrace it. We love to read. On trips, part of our suitcases are reserved for books we buy along the way. We retrofitted bookshelves to hold our TV so that we could fit more book in our living room. So ultimately it wasn't a terribly difficult choice - but apparently it wasn't a common one either because I couldn't find Save-the-Dates or invitations to match up with our theme and our budget... so, whats an el' cheapo DIY gal to do? DIY them of course!

Blogging for a Babies and Boobies

One of the great things about LowesBerg (yes - that's what I've named our house. no - it's not a manor, but if Downton Abbey can have a name as well as an address, well, then so can LowesBerg)...

...is its location. We're super convenient to the Metro (DC's lifeline, and the savor of my sanity since I don't have to drive in DC traffic everyday to work), our neighborhood is awesome, and we have some pretty great neighbors.

One of those neighbors is also a former coworker, Gillian, who I already knew before we moved into LowesBerg. I actually called her up when we were looking in the area and she had me come over and do a bit of a walkabout with her and her awesome pups one evening, which further sold me on the area.

Meet Gillian (oh - and that's not one of the pups that I was referencing)